Coriena Hipple Merejo shares her experience in managing relationships and operations, emphasizing clear communication and active listening.
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[Music]
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Howdy Partners and welcome to another episode of the Howdy Partners podcast
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where we give you
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tactical insights so that you can have better partnerships. Today we're going
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to be talking
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about the topic of striking a balance between having relationships with your
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partners and also
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having the proper operations in place so that you are generating revenue. There
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's a narrative in
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the market that there are two types of partner people. One is the relationship
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type and the other
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is the operations type. Luckily today we have an expert in both and so without
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further ado I am
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joined with Karina Hippel-Mareo who comes from Pipetrive and a background in
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customer success
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and customer service so she not only has the expertise in managing
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relationships but in her
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previous role at Pipetrive she also ran the operations. Karina why don't you
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introduce yourself
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and tell the audience more about who you are and why this topic is important to
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you. Thank you Will
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for this opportunity really looking forward to diving into this subject and I'm
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pretty passionate
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about it because you can't have one without the other. If you have great
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relationships but the
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operations don't support and vice versa and how that came to me was I started
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out in call centers
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early stages of my career and came across the friction of when operations does
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not work.
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That comes out in the customer interactions it comes out with your your CSRs
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that are taking the call
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right so as a people person I wanted my team to enjoy their work feel good
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about their work and
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be able to do their best work so that's when I started diving into operations
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and once you go
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down that route it's like you know you start getting involved in projects and I
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found that you know
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that I loved doing them both because a good running operation allows you then
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to more you know to
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focus on the relationships which are the reason why we're doing any job that we
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're doing is about
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the people. I love it and one of the things that I've thought about along that
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same vein is the
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best partner people are project managers because project managers they are able
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to clearly identify
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what needs to be done who needs to do them you know they have the operation
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side but what I think
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the claim to that being so important for partner people is the fact that it is
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clear communication
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and I'm a big believer that if you are clearly communicating something then
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that means people
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on the other side will better understand it and more easily receive it and you
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do them a service by
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respecting their time and energy and efforts by organizing this information
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alongside them and so
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what was I'm curious you mentioned you know having that experience where you
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then decided I'm going
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to take this on what was the impact of that you know you mentioned having
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people enjoy the work
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that they do what do you have any like metric impacts or even some anecdotal
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impacts on
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how this realization then impacted the the team and the overall business sure
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the first like I'll
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say notable I was working at a student loan call center and what would happen
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is you know we'd all
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be part of the hiring process of bringing in new phone reps but you wouldn't
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know like who would be
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on your team until after they'd gone through training and been assigned and we
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were finding that
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you know it was an intense training so six weeks of just all this information
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and then it's like
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get on the phones and these people were not they weren't ready they it just
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they just weren't ready
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to do it so I started diving into the why they weren't ready and I pitched a
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transition program
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right so basically they would come out of training beyond the floor and I was
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the transition manager
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and they were doing the job but we would have intervals throughout the day
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where we would stop
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and talk about certain topics and there was a curriculum around it and
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basically we increased
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retention by about 25% because there was such a high turnover of people coming
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in and filling
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overwhelmed so we increased the retention and then also reduced handle time and
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increased quality
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you know each cohort got better and better and better because people just felt
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supported and
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you know more confident going into the role which is what anybody wants right
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so that was
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my first word like aha like okay this isn't just about like the feel good of it
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there's here's the
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results that I can then continue to get resources for this program. Awesome and
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so that then led you
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to becoming the global channel leader at a I would say popular tech company and
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so what's your
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superpower in this why from customer service and you know that team building
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and the operations
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that you built why did you get led into the partner and like channel side of
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things and
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what was that inspiration to push you into that area and or you know again that
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superpower that
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you have that made you a good fit for that kind of role. That is a great
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question and it's one of
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my favorite stories because I think it highlights you know my genuine concern
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for people and really
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wanting to make the working environment for the people that I'm you know
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responsible for
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the best it can be and having curiosity so once again I started out a pipe
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drive managing a
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support team I opened their floor to office they had that time did not have an
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office presence in
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the US so we opened that office it was all new team members and so hiring the
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right people first of
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all and then helping them you know get into this role and I was learning along
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the way and I like
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to remove friction because that's to me is what operations is all about right
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so as soon as you
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start seeing friction you know where's this friction coming from and one of the
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biggest frictions that
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support folks had was with partnerships they didn't understand it which is you
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know common they didn't
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understand it and I didn't either so I just started digging into that friction
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and getting to know
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the people who were already in the partnership team understanding what they
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needed from support
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what their partners needed from support and it was uh it just it became a
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project of its own
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and in the doing of that project I ended up in front of Patrick Paul who was
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the former VP
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and those conversations of like hey here's how I think we can make this better
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happen to uh I think you you talk about increasing your what is it your surface
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of luck
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for opportunity you know where those things meet yeah the luck surface area so
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my curiosity in
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wanting to help make remove friction for my team and then consequently remove
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friction for the partner
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team happened to coincide with the head of that department moving on to a
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different department so
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there was an opening and you know I guess in that conversation with Pat he was
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like hey I think I
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have an opportunity for you if you're you know if you're interested and yeah so
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that's how I
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moved over into heading up the program and channel operations of hype drive
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following my
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curiosity in trying to remove friction nice and you are clearly solving a pain
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for the team that
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you are initially working with where you know they either again didn't have the
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understanding or
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the operations in place to best assist you know clients and partners and you
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know themselves in
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that interaction and so that's that's very unique I would say because I you
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know I haven't heard
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too many stories about support teams or service teams that are so aware of
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partners that they
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experience these problems it's usually of course you know sales and marketing
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and maybe success
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as well but support is a very unique place to identify a challenge in the
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business and then from there
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grow into into the role so you've adopted the idea of nearbound and I think it
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's safe to say that
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you really enjoy the the concept and so where does this fit into where does
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nearbound fit into
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all of this for you so you know you've been doing this for a while and you know
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you've had this
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curiosity and then you learn about nearbound what does it mean to you and how
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does it play into
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all of this in your interactions so I'll kind of step back to the scenarios
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that I've been talking
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about one of the core things for me is just listening right being present
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because I think we've all
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been in a situation where somebody was listening to respond like to to waiting
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for their moment to
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interject what they already wanted to say versus really listening to you and so
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that was a skill
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that I have cultivated and that's why nearbound I feel like I connected so
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deeply with it because
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in order to do nearbound you have to genuinely care about people and you have
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to be listening
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you're not going to know how to connect these other opportunities or have the
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relationships right
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I think one of the things that I enjoyed most so like kind of going back to me
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jumping into
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channel as you said like pretty unique to come from support and jump into that
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role and I'm really
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a lifelong learner I just love to learn so I was looking for resources and then
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I went to a in partner con in Soljared and got down the partner hacker track
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and just you know
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PLX summit and that like all resonated with me because it was just giving
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vocabulary to how I
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already operated in my world and helping me to to understand the ecosystem and
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understand channel
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and then and take what I already felt good good at and strong at and putting
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those pieces together
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in a impactful way that would have you know like a network effect of just
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relationships and and
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outputs and sales and you know people trusting you because they know you
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understand their problem
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and you build a reputation of delivering and saying no to things when it's not
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the right thing
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like oh I don't have this answer but here's somebody that does so yeah I feel
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like nearbound
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was just a very natural progression for me because it just aligned with my core
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values
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yeah and in the business world I feel like it can easily get lost this idea of
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relationships and
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being present and actively listening because you know and I think of the modern
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state of sales where
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a seller is probably very stressed to hit their quota and all they truly know
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is maybe the old
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playbook and they're going to try those tactics because that's all they know
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they don't want to
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think about anything else because they're probably too stressed so when they
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try and
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receive the information from the prospect and I don't have data for this but I
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can only imagine
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that you know 80 percent of sellers are somewhat falling flat on their face in
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terms of active
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listening and making sure they're truly understanding and listening to
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understand and then bringing a
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solution that actually helps versus having their own desires and drive get in
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the way of what they
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say next or how they move the interaction forward and I think that's probably
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one of the primary
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challenges that a lot of sellers have when adopting a partnerships mindset and
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thinking about oh well
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we can't solve this but our partners can and they don't always have that light
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bulb moment and it's
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not to say that you know they're incompetent or anything like that it's simply
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one the playbook
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wasn't given to them previously because it's still being built and two the
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economic climate is just
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so stressful that I imagine it it makes it even more challenging to be present
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because it already
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requires some mental resources for that and so I would agree that the words
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near bound from what
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you said it resonates and the whole ethos of it is focused on that idea that we
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're all kind of
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already living through of this you know being present and actively engaging and
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trying to deliver
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value and generate genuine relationships because I think we all felt the pain
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of what happens when
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we don't build those genuine relationships it becomes you know the the trope of
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the corporation
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that doesn't care about their employees or you know their customers and the CEO
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just gets paid
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you know more and more and they lay off people and all of that so I mean that's
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still gonna happen
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you know in the in the market and whatnot but I think we as individuals who are
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in this interaction
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are feeling that and trying to trying to change that and so I think the with
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that same vein the
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idea of a business trying to grow at all costs and truly be the you know growth
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engine that their
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advisors and investors all want it can you know at scale potentially lose the
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the whole I guess core
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reason a business exists which is serving the client and making money while
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doing it so I think
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there is an evolution happening in the partnerships and channel space and that
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evolution is focused
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on not just having quality relationships with partners and the people that we
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work with but also
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really making sure that it is operationally sound and also driving what that
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business
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needs and wants which is the the growth and so the the narrative in the market
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like I started
15:57
the episode has been you know there's the relationship partner person and the
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operations
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partner person and so which would you say you lean more towards because you
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know when I think
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about you from what I know about you I don't know how to to you know classify
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you not that I should
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per se but like what would you say you lean more towards is it operations or
16:21
relationships
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well it's really tough because I love them both but if you're gonna force me to
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choose
16:30
I would say relationships because operations would be irrelevant without them
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right you wouldn't even
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need an operation if you didn't have a customer really you know some some
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relationship that you're
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protecting that you're trying to grow and I'm just a people person I think by
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by nature
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so yeah I would I would say relationship I really like the sentiment that you
16:56
just mentioned there
16:57
where you were talking about how you know there's if there is no relationship
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there are no need for
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operations and I think that's a very important piece to understand because
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if we only focus on operations then it does become that you know lifeless
17:16
corporate business
17:18
interaction which people are tired of and they don't want to engage with that
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you know if they're
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spending eight plus hours a day and having their identity blended in with the
17:28
workplace which is
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happening much more often in modern times they don't want it to feel like it's
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in inputs and
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outputs they want to feel like there is a relationship there and I would
17:41
venture to say that operations
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help to enhance a relationship and what I mean by that is you know I talked
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about clear
17:51
communication and you know having a step-by-step procedure if you are creating
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this environment
17:59
where there is clarity and we both know the direction that we're heading in
18:04
then it's going
18:05
to be easier to engage and it's going to feel seamless and effortless and we
18:10
can
18:11
focus more let's say on that relationship side of things and we'll also be
18:16
getting work done which
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is going to be important to both of us and then you know we both don't fall
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into that trap that
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sellers fall into where they you know again are so stressed that they can't
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even focus on the
18:28
customer's world and so I like that that there's this blend of the two because
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yes you need to
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develop relationships but you need to know how to action those relationships
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and so
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what are some of those operations that you would say more partner people need
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to focus on let's say
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they're the relationship type and they're trying to make these relationships
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work together between
18:57
their businesses what kinds of operations should they be thinking about more of
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in terms of you know
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generating revenue or generating value for end clients well this is a little
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bit of the scenic
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route but I'll give you a couple examples one one of the things that that I
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focused in on early on
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was you know partner account managers I know they're called different things
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different places but
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in order for them to be able to be present and focus on quota and the things
19:34
that matter to them
19:35
there's operational supports that need to happen so one of the things that that
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we did was
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really educate the operational team on how the sales team was measured how the
19:49
partner
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channel managers were measured and then have that sales mindset I think it's
19:56
really important that
19:57
the operational folks have a bit of the sales mindset like understanding that
20:02
if it's at the
20:02
end of the quarter your partner account managers may not be as responsive
20:06
because they need to be
20:07
focused right understanding that if you are responsible for CRM hygiene and
20:14
automations and
20:16
such like you know what are your partner account managers doing administr
20:21
atively manually
20:22
that could be automated so by having those conversations by listening by
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understanding
20:28
what makes someone else's work easy you know you can implement that and then on
20:35
the partner front
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you know this is where listening really and I'm probably going to say
20:44
some some things that my people don't want to hear but it's the truth we create
20:51
these
20:51
great programs right but if they are not if you're giving partners things that
21:00
they don't want
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or value it's not going to incentivize them to the behavior that you're trying
21:06
to incentivize
21:07
so that like that's first and foremost and then the other thing is I have seen
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where programs are
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designed you know somebody have this cool idea these tiers we're going to give
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them this this this
21:24
and this right but if you do not have a good operational foundation to execute
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on the program
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your program is only as valuable as your ability to execute so I could go on
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and on like there's just
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you really have to look 360 and that that's why having partnerships baked into
21:50
your organization
21:51
is the route to success because when you try to duct tape them onto the side
21:56
then you don't have
22:00
the tools and the you know the company buy-in and the resources I'm pretty
22:06
passionate about this
22:07
topic because you know the old saying stuff rolls downhill right so if you don
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't have that
22:13
operational support and you're not supporting partners customers are not
22:16
getting a good experience
22:18
either neither are you know the relationship between your partners and your
22:22
sales team like it all
22:24
you know it all goes together and so you have to think ahead and take that
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pause and really
22:31
do your due diligence do your little listening tour uh minimally understand
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where your friction
22:37
points are because people will tell you follow the friction you know what
22:41
people say they're
22:42
frustrated about that's you know that will lead you to uh your most you know
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list of priorities
22:49
operationally and that you'll have plenty to do you'll never run out of things
22:54
to do if you listen
22:55
to people yeah there's uh there's already so much to do as a partner person and
23:00
if you're focusing
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on the right things then you're gonna of course move the needle and uh what
23:05
came to mind you mentioned
23:06
that was um how in certain tools there's like you can gamify and give partners
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points that they can
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maybe redeem and you know some partners might care about that but that's
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probably not aligned
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to their overall business goals that they actually do care about like it's not
23:26
a nice to have it's
23:27
it needs to be a need to have and then they'll start taking action within the
23:31
partnership so I
23:33
completely agree there um so what would you say is your claim to fame um with
23:40
your work at pipe
23:42
drive are there one or two examples you can share about the impact that you had
23:46
maybe a project
23:46
that you implemented or um you know an impact of on revenue or efficiency and
23:53
onboarding or whatever
23:55
it is what is that claim to fame that you would say this is what I'm most proud
24:00
of uh from working
24:02
with the pipe drive team. There are so many I I'll I'll narrow it down to um I
24:12
think the first
24:14
impact coming into the the partner team was really just going back to like what
24:21
the partner
24:22
account managers needed was looking at the recruitment process and the onboard
24:27
ing process
24:28
and we were able to reduce that time by more than 50 percent just by
24:34
implementing
24:35
uh some automations with the CRM making sure that you know the assets were
24:42
aligned with the goals
24:43
of the partner account managers so that was that was a good investment of time
24:49
of really going
24:50
piece by piece you know stage by stage and looking holistically at that process
24:55
and that was you
24:56
know a team effort I think when you hire the right people and then you leave
25:01
them alone you know
25:02
the subject matter experts and you let them do their job so uh I take credit in
25:08
that I that I
25:09
gave the space for that to happen right but this was like really a team effort
25:14
um so that I think
25:15
and then we instituted a partner advisory council and where I feel like my my
25:25
part in that um
25:27
apart from coordinating the event and and and the administrative piece was
25:35
getting the right
25:36
people that partners wanted to talk to and product is always at the top of that
25:40
list because
25:42
and and it's such a win-win so we talk about you know nearbound and
25:45
relationships and
25:47
I think nobody wants to feel sold people feel good when it's you know like that
25:53
you don't mind
25:54
giving something when you know like you're getting value right so the partners
25:58
would come to whatever
25:59
the location was and we would have like a two-day event and bring the product
26:05
team in because the
26:06
product team would get this amazing intelligence if you want to improve your
26:11
product talk to your
26:13
partners because they know what your product can do what it can't do what it
26:17
needs to do you know
26:18
what it should do and they might even be able to tell you like how you know how
26:23
to solve it like
26:24
these partners really dive deep into these tools and they're a wealth of
26:28
information so listen to
26:30
them and that and creating this environment not just where there was a lot of
26:34
talking but um and I
26:37
think this is a key of of operations is that the actionable points so we would
26:42
have the conversation
26:44
you know the the product VP would come in and lead segments and we did
26:48
workshops but then at the
26:50
end of it it's like you have all these ideas okay partners let's vote if you
26:55
only had like two votes
26:57
of what you want to see on this roadmap and they would you know they would mark
27:01
it and then it would
27:01
be like transparent to everybody this is what you said this is what you agreed
27:05
these are the most
27:06
important things and then the product team could go back and then to see that
27:11
on the roadmap it wasn't
27:13
just um a strengthening of trust with the partners imagine the impact to
27:20
customers who the partner was
27:22
working with seeing that their partner had an impact on the roadmap that
27:27
improved their business
27:28
output like I would say hands down that's probably like my most favorite uh
27:36
accomplishment that I
27:38
got to be a part of facilitating that's awesome that is the gold standard in my
27:43
opinion of partnerships
27:45
because your partners will then be more incentivized to engage because they're
27:50
they feel heard they
27:52
also know the value much better because they were the one that gave the idea
27:58
which was likely
27:59
inspired from the customers world that they know and it's related to the world
28:04
you know your partner
28:06
and so they're going to be much more inclined to be aligned with that value and
28:14
therefore bring it
28:15
to their customers because they simply just understand it more so lots of
28:19
benefits there I love that
28:22
I think more people should be having these partner advisory boards and I think
28:26
it's if it's not being
28:28
activated within the partner program it's a big missed opportunity because like
28:32
you said yeah
28:33
there's so much valuable input that you can gain um so just wrapping up here we
28:40
are going to move
28:41
on to the tactical takeaway what is the one daily or weekly practice that you
28:48
either recommend to
28:50
others or you would say has helped you be successful and it's something that
28:56
people can implement
28:57
again daily weekly right after they listen to this episode what is that
29:02
tactical thing that you did
29:03
that you feel helped I would say um on a weekly basis trying like if today's a
29:13
meeting day to the
29:15
best of your ability try to have meetings and tasks separate so if I'm in
29:21
meetings all day I could
29:23
focus on listening because despite every you know people want to say they're
29:28
great multitaskers the
29:30
reality is we we really aren't we do best for ourselves and for others when we
29:36
're present in the
29:37
moment and we're listening and we're focusing so separating that and then in
29:42
the scope of meetings
29:45
it can be easy to just talk and talk and talk don't let that meeting go without
29:51
having an
29:52
actionable takeaway and then you know and a time frame to follow up I think
29:58
that was that alone was
30:00
probably the single thing that multiplied results not just for me but for the
30:08
teams that I worked
30:10
with being the person on the call to say great point what's the takeaway and
30:15
then at the end of that
30:16
making sure that it's like okay who's owning this action what's the time frame
30:22
for this like
30:23
you know relationships are valuable but if you don't have that tactical
30:30
um clear ownership and time frame and action then you will not move the needle
30:39
and you'll
30:40
just keep having to have meetings we've all been there about the same thing and
30:43
it's like if if
30:45
everyone owns it nobody does so uh that would be my my single valuable most
30:52
valuable takeaway
30:54
I love it I've written about that before um you know people are busy if you don
30:59
't have a clear
30:59
next step they're you know good conversation probably but they move on to the
31:03
next one and then
31:05
they immediately forget because they don't know what they're doing when they
31:08
need to do it by how
31:09
much of a priority it is so I love that I uh the viewers or audio listeners may
31:15
not have seen me
31:16
nodding my head but it was I was like a bobblehead because I was like yep yep
31:20
this is this is it
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that's one of the best things that you can do because that's going to move the
31:24
needle
31:25
Karina thank you so much for your time and your wisdom this was another episode
31:31
of the Howdy
31:32
Partners podcast and of course go implement the tactical takeaways from today
31:37
and we'll see you
31:38
on the next episode